The Dark Knight Rises took more than a $1bn (£620m) at the box office worldwide (Picture: Warner Bros)

DVD review: The Dark Knight Rises struggles to live up to its predecessor, but remains a confident and suitably explosive conclusion to the trilogy.

The glut of pre-release teaser trailers and marketing virals for this muscular finale to Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy felt like overkill. Here was a film that followed on from one of the best action movies ever (The Dark Knight), arguably the greatest villain (Heath Ledger’s Joker) and featured a cast bulging with Oscar winners. Indeed, when it finally reached cinemas it proved more popular than oxygen, with box office takings equivalent to the GDP of a small country.

So, does it stand up to its predecessor? The answer is a resounding ‘sort of’. Nolan takes a circuitous route in revealing the fate of Gotham’s reluctant superhero and at times it feels as if it’s several films pressed into one. His ambition is admirable however, fusing mighty action sequences with an intricate plot and a powerful core moral struggle, even if the film occasionally strains under the weight of its intellectual ambition.

Quibbles aside, it is a confident end to the trilogy, which has easily outstripped its rivals. To paraphrase Lt Gordon, it is the adaptation the comic books deserve and the one a modern cinema engorged with rushed superhero movies needs.